Trump campaign's Russia ties: Who's involved

Please explain how Trump's position has been improved by having his associates (at least) exposed as having communicated with Russian agents. I fail to see how this helps Donald either politically or personally.

I guess like the chatter that Hillary was a criminal, with time and no indictments or grand juries finding any alleged facts which could prosecute a person for a wrong doing, it sure gets old hearing the chatter and to that extent, I think President Trump insulates himself from these charges. Why somebody has not been indicted if these facts are so good is beyond me. I am sure there has been Russian wrongdoing. Beyond that, I hope investigators start releasing specific facts which go beyond innuendo and rumor.

2seaoat wrote:Please explain how Trump's position has been improved by having his associates (at least) exposed as having communicated with Russian agents. I fail to see how this helps Donald either politically or personally.

I guess like the chatter that Hillary was a criminal, with time and no indictments or grand juries finding any alleged facts which could prosecute a person for a wrong doing, it sure gets old hearing the chatter and to that extent, I think President Trump insulates himself from these charges. Why somebody has not been indicted if these facts are so good is beyond me. I am sure there has been Russian wrongdoing. Beyond that, I hope investigators start releasing specific facts which go beyond innuendo and rumor.

When was the last time a member of the 1% saw the inside of jail? Time to put an end to that crap. LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP!

othershoe1030 wrote:Was 45 just trying to cozy up to Putin as a means of doing business in Russia and the Russians just took advantage of his intent? Putin wanted to weaken Hillary. Maybe he got more than he bargained for and now he's trying to figure out how best to take advantage of the situation?

Or... Putin has been played by trump to gain a better negotiating position. It's just as likely... if not moreso.

Please explain how Trump's position has been improved by having his associates (at least) exposed as having communicated with Russian agents. I fail to see how this helps Donald either politically or personally.

That's a narrative... based loosely on leaks and innuendo... not fact.

What we see in policy is the trump admin slamming Russia and taking a hard line.

The logical next step is for Putin to reach out to trump and be willing to compromise.

Page left the consulting firm Eurasia Group in 1998, suggesting his Russian sympathies were known for nearly two decades before he joined Trump campaign

"A former adviser to Donald Trump who is at the centre of an FBI investigation was exhibiting “strongly pro-Kremlin” ideology almost two decades ago, his former employer has told the Guardian.

Carter Page, who was reportedly being monitored by the FBI last summer because of suspicions about his ties to Russia, was hired in 1998 by the Eurasia Group, a major US consulting firm that advises banks and multinational corporations, but left the firm shortly thereafter.

The account of Page’s abrupt departure from the Eurasia Group suggests that concerns about Page and questions about his links to Russia were known in some professional circles for nearly two decades and long before Page joined Trump’s successful presidential campaign.

Now Page – who has denied all wrongdoing – is at the centre of overlapping FBI and congressional investigations into possible cooperation between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin..."

2004-2007: Page works on energy investments for Merrill Lynch in Moscow.

March 21, 2016: Trump describes Page as a campaign aide during a Washington Post editorial meeting.

March 30, 2016: Page tells Bloomberg that "his business has suffered directly from the U.S. economic sanctions imposed on Russia's escalating involvement in the Ukraine."

July 7, 2016: Page gives a speech in Moscow critical of U.S. policy.

July 2016: Page meets with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio.

Aug. 5, 2016: Page says Igor Sechin, chairman of the giant Russian gas company Rosneft, "has done more to advance U.S.-Russia relations than any individual in or out of government from either side of the Atlantic over the past decade." Sechin is identified by Russian media as an ally and deputy to Vladimir Putin. Rosneft is largely held by the Russian government.

Sept. 25, 2016: Kellyanne Conway says Page is not part of the campaign team during an interview with CNN.

December 2016: A Kremlin spokesman tells a Russian news agency that there was no contact between Page and the government.

January 2017: Press Secretary Sean Spicer says,"Carter Page is an individual who the president-elect does not know and was put on notice months ago by the campaign."

March 3, 2017: Page tells Chris Hayes of MSNBC re Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak,"I'm not going to deny that I talked with him. ... I will say that I never met him anywhere outside of Cleveland, let's just say that much."..."

Will someone please post something relevant. I would love those bastards to be punished if they committed crimes, but where is this proof that moves this beyond innuendo......will I have to wait another half year?

2seaoat wrote:Will someone please post something relevant. I would love those bastards to be punished if they committed crimes, but where is this proof that moves this beyond innuendo......will I have to wait another half year?

According to our intelligence agencies Russia performed a cyber attack on our election system hoping to influence the election or at least to sew seeds of mistrust among Americans of our election system. This is not innuendo. Russia did this.

So then the question becomes: Why do so many people in Trump's camp have ties with Russian agents? What do they want? What are they trying to do? How do they hope to influence the president?

Has there been an administration in our history with so many people connected somehow to Russia? Isn't this just too bizarre for words? I can't recall another administration having so many ties to any single foreign country, can you?

I guess you could call this merely innuendo (the reason behind the connections, the connections continue to come to light) but when it comes to a foreign adversarial government I'm not sure that's exactly the right word, perhaps a phrase like un-do foreign influence or treason or treachery, disloyalty?

Do we just look at this as a harmless curiosity? Isn't it worth fleshing out the details? We may very well have to wait another half year. It's important even before it becomes a crime.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Donald Trump on Monday finally named several members of his team of foreign policy advisers in a meeting with The Washington Post’s editorial board, also laying out a global posture starkly at odds with longstanding U.S. policy.

The names he provided for his advisory team ended weeks of questions about who forms the Republican front-runner’s brain trust on global affairs. But the group’s lack of boldface Washington names and clear policymaking track records means there are still unanswered questions about the international direction they would hope to lead the country in. They also don’t clarify the GOP candidate’s broader global vision, as some have taken positions contrary to those he has articulated on the campaign trail.

Trump told the Post that he wants to reduce American commitments to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a pillar of relations with Europe, and challenged the benefit of American military investment in Asia, one of the world’s fastest-growing economic regions.

Trump detailed the position and his foreign policy team just hours before his first major foreign policy test — a speech before the annual 18,000-strong American Israel Public Affairs Committee gathering in Washington.

Speaking alongside his Democratic and Republican rivals, Trump will have to display a grasp of substance on issues within Israel, such as the peace process and and Israel’s qualitative military edge, and in the region, including Iran’s nuclear program. In doing so, he could provide an initial sense of how this new group of advisers will shape Trump’s world view.

“If he does not make this foreign policy advisers group look good by what’s in that speech,” political strategist Angela Rye told CNN, “I think he’s got a problem.”

Comparing the unglamorous business of crafting a foreign policy to sausage-making, Rye added that for Trump, the test is that “it’s about knowing what to put in the sausage as well.”

“And I have quite a few more,” Trump told the Post’s editorial board, without offering details. “But that’s a group of some of the people that we are dealing with. We have many other people in different aspects of what we do. But that’s pretty representative group.”

Later at a Washington news conference on Monday, Trump said, “I have a team, we actually have a very good team,” calling it, “a top-of-the-line team.”

None of the men on Trump’s list are leading figures in the Republican foreign policy establishment. Many of the latter group came out publicly against a Trump presidency in a March letter that declared he would make “America less safe” and that he was “utterly unfitted to the office” of president.

One challenge Trump faces is that at this stage of the campaign, he doesn’t have a large pool to draw from, Matt Lewis, a CNN political commentator and senior contributor for The Daily Caller, told CNN. “It’s tough for Donald Trump,” Lewis said.

Describing Trump’s advisers as “smart, serious people,” Lewis added that, “You’re either going to choose people who weren’t at the upper, upper echelon, or people who are associated with the George W. Bush era,” who Lewis said are known for “nation-building and adventurism.”

Another option for Trump, Lewis suggested, would be to go with Democrats.

Trump supporter John Phillips, a KABC radio host, said that the real estate mogul will have no trouble fielding talented help. “No question, as he moves closer to the convention in Cleveland and he looks more and more like the nominee every single day, all of this these people or many of them are going to come on board,” Phillips said.

But one of Trump’s opponents, John Kasich, blasted the foreign policy names that the former reality TV star announced earlier in the day.

Taking a dig at Trump on Twitter, Kasich sent out a list of his own advisers — former administration officials and lawmakers who include a former adviser to President Ronald Reagan and a former CIA director.

“This is what it looks like when you build your national security team out of actual experts,” Kasich said.

The advisers already with Trump include Phares, a professor at National Defense University and and adviser to the U.S. House of Representatives on terrorism. The Lebanese-born Phares, who previously advised 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, was also a high-ranking official in a Christian militia tied to massacres during Lebanon’s civil war.

Carter Page, the founder of Global Energy Capital, has experience as an investment banker in London and Moscow. George Papadopoulos, who worked for former Republican candidate Ben Carson, is an oil and gas consultant focused on the geopolitics of the energy trade, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Joe Schmitz, a lawyer, is a former Defense Department Inspector General and a former executive with the Blackwater security firm, associated with the killing of Iraqi civilians.

And Gen. Joseph Keith Kellogg, at one point a COO at Oracle, led the 82nd Airborne Division and served as chief operating officer of the multinational Coalition Provisional Authority that ran Iraq from 2003 through 2004.

Trump has criticized American involvement in Iraq and said that he was an early opponent of intervention there.

He acknowledged that Kellogg and his perspectives on the conflict diverge.

“He does have a different opinion, but I do like different opinions,” Trump told CNN.

And he said more broadly of his advisers: “It doesn’t mean that I’m going to use what they’re saying.”

Trump’s meeting with the Post came just hours before the billionaire businessman took questions from the press at the hotel he is building in Washington. This evening, he addresses AIPAC along with Kasich and fellow Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, a Texas senator.

Trump has for weeks said he would release the names of foreign policy advisers but has until now repeatedly missed his own deadlines.

Asked last week in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” about his advisers, Trump first pointed to himself: “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain.”

The foreign policy positions he advanced Monday demonstrated that his thinking on global affairs has led him to advance positions that would turn parts of U.S. foreign policy on their head.

“NATO is costing us a fortune, and yes, we’re protecting Europe with NATO, but we’re spending a lot of money,” Trump said of the alliance in his remarks to the Post. “We certainly can’t afford to do this anymore.”

And when asked whether the U.S. benefits from its engagement with Asia, Trump responded, “Personally, I don’t think so.”

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Why did I post this? Because Carter Page is one of the primary people being investigated...because it appears that Jeff Sessions brought him on board...and to look back to a year ago.

What I'm exposing is the leftist hypocrisy and lack of any sense of fair play. So the tables are turned... and I find the irony delicious... lol. I couldn't care less that y'all can't stand one minority voice telling you what you don't want to hear or acknowledge. The truth is that partisanship from both sides is the reason that we will never have an accountable or transparent govt. So tough shit... I'll do as I please. If you can't handle the offense to your dedicate sensibilities then block my posts.

PkrBum wrote:What I'm exposing is the leftist hypocrisy and lack of any sense of fair play. So the tables are turned... and I find the irony delicious... lol. I couldn't care less that y'all can't stand one minority voice telling you what you don't want to hear or acknowledge. The truth is that partisanship from both sides is the reason that we will never have an accountable or transparent govt. So tough shit... I'll do as I please. If you can't handle the offense to your dedicate sensibilities then block my posts.